Amazon’s Alexa joins Canada Day celebrations and her very own first year anniversary in Canada with Anthem singing, party ideas, Canadian jokes and tongue twisters and more. If you have an Alexa speaker you are all set. If not, check out Amazon’s Alexa smart speakers: Alexa Echo $99.99, Alexa Dot $39.99 and the newest Alexa Spot with screen and cameras, available at www.amazon.ca. Alexa tries Canadian accents, but she can’t pronounce Regina quite right, eh! Still, this new catalogue of voice command utterances are available now to make Canada Day special.

Powered by the latest Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 Mobile chip platform, the LG G7 ThinQ comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It features an extra bright 6.1-inch bright display nearly half an inch larger than its predecessor but keeps the same width making it easy to use with one hand.

It’s challenging to pick new trends at the recent 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. After all, with 4,000 vendors showing big and small technology spread out over 2.7 million square feet between several spread-out huge halls, it’s impossible to see it all.

This year though, one repetitive new technology won hands-down. Voice assistant technology from Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home Assistant were everywhere and in the most interesting appliances.

Still can’t decide on that perfect gift? This collection boasts uniqueness, practicality and smarts not to mention having something to brag about.

The Sage universal fit in-ear monitor from $772 from Noble Audio is not your every day audio earpiece. It features two proprietary Knowles balanced drivers per piece that result in a true to life flat accurate sound, suitable for phones or portable amps. It’s meticulously crafted with an aluminium shell and non-twisting pull-out cables, ending in a natural twist to securely fit around each ear. The packaging oozes gifting with a generous supply of earbud adaptors, a small brush to keep the components tidy and a tough weather proof carrying case with a personal engraved metal contact card which helps lost units find themselves home. You can upgrade the Sage fitted with striking one-off universal acrylic pieces (pictured in photo) for $1,028. There are eight in-ear models to pick from, with up to 10 proprietary balanced armature drivers per side like the Kaiser Encore $2,341. For a bit more and several weeks of patience, artist John ”the Wizard” Moulton will fit the Encore in an acrylic customized shell (choice of uploaded custom art work, laser engraving, glow in the dark, 24K gold nugget or wire filament) for $2,700.

Attention Mother’s Day procrastinators! If you have not chosen your gift on the eve of honouring mothers, check my list of smart tech gift suggestions, apps and most importantly, why I like all of them. All come from reputable makers and are proven technology. Some of these are only available online but I’m sure husbands and children can find clever ways of stalling Mom with a small delivery gift delay, right?

The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is over! With information overload beyond comprehension for most folks, and more than 3,800 exhibiting company booths to explore, the 50th anniversary tech Mecca show came to an end on Sunday.

Giant brands like Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Sony backed by a crew of several hundred each, in multi million dollar “booths” large enough to fill a dozen homes each, impressed. In contrast, one-person booths with a single table, among the 600 startup displays the CES Eureka Park Marketplace hoped for the break of a lifetime.

Robots at CES were entertaining but robotic vacuum cleaners from LG and Samsung were smarter

At last! My 12 tech days of Christmas comes to an end today. The words of the perennial 1909 festive song by Frederic Austin’s original had changed slightly, but the meaning is all the same. Merry Christmas!

OK, it’s Saturday afternoon and you still have a few tech gifts to go on your list. You don’t want to order online, you need to have it all wrapped up for Christmas morning. We know that someone special could be you!

Someone recently got the new Googe Pixel phone. What is the best accessory for it? The Google Daydream VR headset, $99 for watching surround 36 VR online, even playing games with the nifty handheld remote control. It’s compact and covered with fuzzy woolly grey fabric. cloth. Most phone shops have them.